What is a Lexile score?
A Lexile is a unit for measuring text difficulty that is directly linked to the reading RIT score. Lexile is reported on an equal interval scale, like the RIT scale. 10L is on the low end and 1700L is on the high end. Books for beginning readers are listed as BR on the scale. The Lexile range is included on individual student progress reports. It allows educators and parents to find books, periodicals, and other reading material that is appropriately challenging for each student. Students are considered to be at an appropriate level when they can comprehend approximately 75% of the material they read. This ensures that students are neither frustrated nor bored, and are stimulating their learning processes while rewarding their current reading abilities. A Lexile measures syntactic complexity: the number of words per sentence. We know that longer sentences are more complex and require more short-term memory to process. A Lexile also measures semantic difficulty: a measure of vocabulary.
